Page 18 of Finding Lexie
This wasn’t good. Not good at all. The last thing they needed was to be cornered. Midas couldn’t help but think about Mogadishu once more. The visions of what mob mentality had done to the special forces men and pilots who’d been trapped in the city flashed through his mind.
As he rushed Lexie down another narrow alley, a door suddenly opened, and Midas came to an abrupt stop. He felt Lexie run into his back, but held his ground as he stared at the dark-skinned woman who’d opened the door.
He and the woman locked gazes for what seemed like an eternity before Lexie peeked out from behind him and said, “Astur?”
“Lexie?” the woman asked.
Before Midas could stop her, Lexie had rushed around him and was hugging the woman. “Oh my gosh! It’s so good to see you!”
The woman’s gaze flicked back to Midas’s and then down the alley, when they heard more men yelling.
Without a word, Astur grabbed Lexie’s arm and pulled her toward the door she’d come out of.
Midas wasn’t about to let the women out of his sight, and he followed close behind. He didn’t mind going inside, it would hide them from the growing mob in the streets—including the armed men he was more and more certain were hunting for Lexie—but he had no idea if they were jumping out of the pan and into the fire.
The door shut behind them, and Midas realized they were in the back room of some sort of store.
“Trouble you in,” Astur said to Lexie.
She scrunched her nose and nodded.
“Hide. Here,” Astur said.
“We don’t want to get you in trouble,” Lexie said immediately. “If we can cut through your store and out the front, we’ll be fine.”
“No fine,” Astur said with a shake of her head. “More men. Look for Americans. Heard them.”
“Shit,” Lexie swore. She looked up at Midas. “What are we going to do? Maybe you should just go. They’re looking for me, not you. You can get back to your team and…” Her voice trailed off.
It didn’t matter what she was going to say. He wasn’t leaving her. No way in hell. “I’m not leaving,” he said sternly.
“Hide here,” Astur repeated. “I work at store. No one think you here.”
Midas studied her. He had no idea who this woman was. But he didn’t see any malice in her eyes. If anything, he saw concern. Not for him, but for Lexie. That didn’t surprise him.
She moved, pushing Lexie to the side and crouching down by the door they’d just entered. She tugged at the boards near their feet until a small space was revealed. It was some sort of storage space, most likely, and Midas could see a few stray cans and some flat cardboard boxes at the bottom, lying in the dirt.
“You hide here,” Astur said, standing and pointing into the hole.
Lexie looked up at him again, and Midas hated the uncertainty on her face. He wasn’t so sure about this either. He didn’t know this Astur woman; for all he knew, she was working with the men looking for them and the second they were in the hole, she’d go outside and lead the group straight to them.
More yelling sounded outside the shop in the alleyway, and Lexie’s eyes got wide. “I don’t think we’ll both fit in there,” she whispered.
“We’ll fit,” Midas said, making a decision. It would be tight, that was for sure. He wasn’t exactly small, and as the tallest man on the team, this was the least ideal situation for him to be in. But if it meant keeping Lexie safe, he’d do whatever it took.
He stepped down into the hole, which was only about three feet deep. He sat on his ass in the dirt and moved his rifle around to his right side. He scooted over as far as he could to the right and gestured for Lexie to join him.
She looked even more skeptical, now that he was inside the hole.
“It looks like a coffin,” she told him with a frown on her face.
“Lexie, there’s no time,” Midas warned her as the voices outside grew closer.
“Shit,” she muttered. Then she turned toward the woman who’d led them into the store and gave her another hug. “Thank you, Astur.”
“You help Astur and children. We help you,” she said as she returned Lexie’s hug. Then she gently pushed Lexie away and gestured to the hole impatiently.
Taking a deep breath, Lexie gingerly stepped into the hole and lay down against Midas. She wiggled a bit, trying to get comfortable, and before she’d even stopped moving, Astur had replaced the boards, making dust fall on top of them. A light in the back room shone through the cracks in the floor, giving them just enough dim illumination to see each other.
